"Hello.
"Hello? Is anyone...Cal? Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, Calvin," Anne said softly. She sat on the floor by the phone and leaned her head against the wall.
"I just wanted to call and make sure you were okay."
"Cal, please come home."
"Don't cry, sweetie. Please, don't cry."
"Just come home. I've got everything all packed. Everything is set. Just come home. Please. Don't leave me."
"I don't want you to go through this again. They always find out and this always happens."
"If I can handle Daddy throwing us out, I can take that smelly little Mr. Dinkle."
"Maybe Dad was right."
"You don't mean it."
"No."
"Will you come home?"
"Don't cry anymore, Annie. I can't take that."
"You'll come home?"
"Yeah. I guess I just needed to think. I'm at some bar. I'll be home in about half an hour. No more crying?"
"I love you, baby."
"I love you too. I'll be home soon."
* * * *
Calvin hung up the battered phone and slid out of the narrow booth. It was the crying, he thought. From the time they were children, he would do anything not to hear her cry. He knew she was right, but it was the crying that made him forgo the long discussion he had planned to muddle through before really agreeing to come home. But she started crying and that was that. Little sister, 1 - Big brother, 0. This game he didn't mind losing.
He was pushing through the bar, feeling strange about being in one in the middle of the day. The day before, they had been told by the apartment manager that they had to leave. He had done some digging with their records and discovered that they were not just husband and wife, as he had been told, but that they were siblings. Place after place, it had always caught up to them. Each time, they were told that either they could all agree to break the lease, or somehow a reason would come up to kick them out. No one wanted them in their building.
Cal understood, but he saw how hard it was on Anne. She loved where they lived. It was just a ten minute walk from the little downtown area. She liked the neighbors for the first time in three years. She was starting to make it their home. But that was usually the way. In their last place, it was a quiet balcony that she loved. In the place before that it was the little pond behind the building. There was something from every place they had lived. He'd forgotten how many times they'd moved in the last few years.
"Hey, sweetie, got time to talk to me now?" He turned to see a woman of about 40. She would have been pretty if she wasn't so weary. She wore a tight yellow blouse with a very obvious black bra. The way she held her drink, it was clear that it was second nature to her. Glass in one hand, slow burning cigarette in her other, she was the picture of happiness. Her eyes had too much make-up, most likely to cover the dark circles that surrounded them.
He never understood how people who had the ability to be decent to themselves chose the life that made them the most miserable. As the thought struck him, he was reminded of his own situation and laughed.
"Hey, sweetie, you don't gotta laugh. I may not be one of them tight-as-a-drum coeds, but I got a few miles left in me."
"I'm sorry. It's not that. It's been a long day. I have to go, so..." He tried to step around her, but she slid in front of him. She moved her glass to her hand with the cigarette and put her free hand on his chest.
"When you came in here, honey, I tried to talk to you."
"Yeah. I gotta get going," he said trying to move. She slid in front of him again. She was like a boozey snake. She ran a hand through her short black hair.
"You told me you had to make a phone call. You made it, so how's about we talk." She moved closer until he could smell her perfume as though it was being injected straight into his brain. "I could be real conversational. Unless you got something else you'd rather do?" She smiled at him and batted her eyelashes before breaking into a throaty laugh that made him want to call a cop.
"Look, I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong idea, but I have to go home. My girl's waiting for me." He smiled at her, as if that explained everything and waited for her to let him go without a scene. The other midday patrons were glancing over at him as he tried to get out of there. The place wasn't that much different than it would have been at night, just sadder with all that dusty sunlight poking holes in everyone's hidey-hole. He saw old men who probably saw presidents come and go from their bar stools. He just wanted to go home and hold Anne. He needed to feel her against him. He'd only been away one night, but it was one too many.
"I really have to go," he said, pushing her aside as gently as he was able.
"It don't gotta be a big deal, honey," she said, pulling him by the elbow. She slithered closer until he could feel the eerie heat of her breath. "We can have some fun and you can run off home, and she'll never know."
"Look, I've tried to be nice, but you don't seem to get it," he said. His voice was darker than before. He suddenly loomed over the woman and backed her up a step. Her hand let go of his arm and her eyes went flat as she considered what he was going to do.
"I don't want to 'spend time' with you. I'm going home to a woman who doesn't make me want to puke. I'm leaving and I want you to forget about it." The frustration of the last couple days was spilling out as he back her down. He felt the muscles in his neck and back tighten up as his anger grew.
"C'mon, sweetie. You don't have to be upset. Let me make you feel better," she said, trying one last time.
"Look, fuck off, alright." He said it louder than he meant to. Everyone looked around. A few men snickered into their glasses. He saw her eyes dart back and forth as she went red with embarrassment.
"No, you fuck off, junior. Go home to your little whore and just think about what you're missing."
"My what," he said softly. His throat was tight. He felt the fluttering in his chest as he got angry. "Say it. Say it again."
"Your whore," she said poking a finger into his chest. Everyone was watching. The TV played in the corner, filling the room with a high pitched static, occasionally interrupted by a laugh track.
He looked at her face as she downed the last of her drink and set it on the table next to her. She looked around in triumph and turned back just in time to see his fist coming toward her nose. She dropped like a sack of potatoes. Some of the men came running from their tables. They looked angry and some of them shouted her name. Friends of hers, he thought. It didn't matter, he had enough mad to work off for everyone.
* * * *
"Where have you been," she said as the door opened. "I was starting to get worried that -"
He shut the door behind him, holding his right hand up close to his chest. He had a piece of cloth wrapped around his knuckles. Blood had begun to seep through. His face had blood on it, and there was a small gash under his left eye. His shirt was torn at the collar and he winced as he sat on the couch.
"Oh, my God. What happened?" She rushed over and held his injured hand.
"Nothing. I just had a disagreement with someone." He pulled the bottom of his shirt up a bit, and sucked air through his teeth at the large bruises on his stomach. He touched them gingerly, yanking his fingers away almost immediately. "Several someones actually. This is turning out to be the worst Saturday I've ever had."
"You were in a fight?" She sounded frantic. "What happened? Were you mugged?"
"No."
"Stay here. I've got to find something to clean you up." She rushed through the room, stepping over boxes and bags. He looked around and tried not to get angry all over again. The walls were bare. Not that there were normally many pictures of theirs anyway. They didn't have any family and they hadn't had any real friends since college. He sighed and tried not to scream as his stomach protested the action.
"Here," she said, coming back into the room. She had a washcloth and a bowl of warm water. "Let's at least get the blood off." She dabbed gently at the gash under his eye. He tried not to jump too hard as the cloth touched his raw cheek.
"Now, suppose you tell me what happened," she said. He told her. He wasn't going to, but then it was out. He told her about the woman and then her friends. By the time he was done, she'd finished with his face and had a large bandage on his cheekbone.
"Oh, Cal, I'm so sorry. Did you win?" He smiled. What a magnificent girl, he thought. No yelling, no screaming about fighting. She just wanted to know if he won. He leaned over and kissed her quick.
"If I wasn't already in love with you..." He sat forward and let her help him with his shirt. "Yeah, I won. I guess," he said, looking at his bloodied hand. She pulled his tattered shirt up over his good arm and helped him slide it carefully down the other and over his injured fist.
"Alright, let's take care of this." She tensed when she saw how mangled his knuckles were. He felt her fingers tighten on his forearm and then release.
"We don't seem to have an easy time of it, do we?" she asked as she soaked his hand in the bowl of water.
"Nope."
"Think maybe you were right? Maybe we should just call it quits?" she asked in a voice he remembered his mother using when he was a child. She let go of him and set her hands on her lap.
"No." He pulled her to him with his good hand. "No, I wouldn't say that."
"All right, then. Can we say that we won't even consider that again? No matter what?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I think we can. I'm sorry, Annie. It's never been that I don't want to be with you. Fuck everybody else, I know who I love. It's always only been about making you happy."
"And you didn't want to see me unhappy again. And that's the only reason, mister, that I let things like you saying we should go our own ways slip by. Otherwise, buster, you'd be in worse pain than this." She pulled his face down and kissed him long and hard.
"I don't care what they say," she said, waving her hand to indicate the world outside. "I only care about you. Just because I don't wear a shirt advertising that you're my brother, doesn't mean I want to run at the first sign of trouble."
"Got it." He leaned back and let out a slow breath.
"Do you think we need to go to the emergency room?"
"Nah. Just hurts. One of those bastards broke a pool cue across my stomach."
"You get him back?"
